Amber Hoopes

September 26, 2025·47 min·4 clips

Amber's aunt Audra says the family suspected disgruntled employee Keith Hescock from the start, who vowed to ruin them.

September 13, 2001 starts with ordinary details. Kathleen Bergner says goodnight to her granddaughter Amber at 10:35 p.m., while Amber lies on her bedroom floor watching TV and reading a magazine. Then the house stops feeling ordinary. The host tells Amber's disappearance through Audra Bergner's memory of watching September 11 coverage with family and saying she could not imagine Amber going missing. Soon after, a 4 a.m. call comes in. Kathleen tells Audra the thing she had just feared, and the episode moves into the careful work of piecing together what happened. The later Hescock lead is grim. After he leaves the house, Jennifer finds an envelope with Hescock's name and address, gets to a phone, contacts her family, and helps investigators find him. He does not stick around. When deputies are collecting evidence at the house, Hescock comes home from work, sees the authorities, and runs toward the hills. The chase ends at Moody Meadows. Trapped on a dead end road in the Grand Teton National Forest, he calls his mother and says he is not going back to prison. Then everything snaps. A canine unit is deployed, the dog bites Hescock, Hescock shoots and kills the dog, one officer is hit in the thigh, and Hescock is shot in the forearm and shoulder before turning the gun on himself. Four seconds change the case. The host notes two deaths and one injury, then returns to what Hescock's family kept from investigators. Their alibi falls apart. They admit he came home, switched vehicles, left again, and later returned with firewood. The host says that, as far as she could find, they never faced interference charges. After that, the case does not break. A search of his home turns up truckloads of movies, dirty clothing, computers, and other items, but no evidence tying him to Amber.

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